


This Nearly Was Mine

by PersephoneTree



Category: The Tudors (TV)
Genre: Comfort Sex, Episode: s04e03 Something for You, F/M, First Time, Missing Scene, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:14:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29001282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersephoneTree/pseuds/PersephoneTree
Summary: Of all women in England, who would have thought he would seek out Anne of Cleves--the only woman he had never wanted--as a mistress? But she had not been this Anne when he had married her, not this easy, assured, charming creature.God willing, tonight he will make it up to her.-----Missing scene from S04 E03. Henry finds himself drawn back to Anne of Cleves.
Relationships: Anne of Cleves/Henry VIII of England
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	This Nearly Was Mine

“May I come to your bed tonight?”

Anne’s eyes widen and her mouth rounds in unvoiced shock. Her hands twitch under Henry’s own. For a long moment he thinks she will refuse him.  _ I would deserve it if she did _ , he tells himself,  _ and I would feel a still greater fool _ . He tilts his head to catch her fluttering gaze, the question hanging heavy in the charged air between them. He wonders if she is seeking the right words with which to extricate herself, remembering how gently she had parried his more subtle approach the last time they dined.

Then Anne’s face softens into a smile. When she speaks, her lilting voice is hesitant, but genuine and warm. “Your Majesty… I would be most honored.” With an elegant gesture, she summons a servant to clear the table. Suddenly embarrassed at his own eagerness, Henry reaches for his cup and drains the last of the wine. Of all women in England, who would have thought he would seek out Anne of Cleves--the only woman he had never wanted--as a mistress? But she had not been  _ this  _ Anne when he had married her, not this easy, assured, charming creature. 

Then again, he hadn’t given her much of a chance to be easy. Nor had he been so himself.

Anne rises from her chair and makes him a graceful courtesy. “Until tonight, Your Majesty,” she murmurs, and Henry’s heart begins to pound. God willing, tonight he will make it up to her.

\-----

When one of Anne’s ladies opens the door to her bedchamber, Henry forces himself to pause, to compose himself. He has lain with Anne before, has touched her breasts and belly and legs, and yet he feels as nervous as a boy. He takes a deep breath, willing his pulse to slow, and walks into the room.

Anne is standing at the foot of the bed, the firelight casting a gentle glow over her dark loose hair. She wears a delicately embroidered white chemise, modestly cut but sheer enough to hint at the flesh beneath. As he enters, she courtesies deeply and holds the pose, head lowered. “Your Majesty.”

Henry waits for the door to close behind him before reaching down to touch her shoulder. “Lady Anne,” he replies softly, and offers her his hand to help her rise. His leg twinges as he braces to steady her, and he prays she doesn’t feel him wince. Looking eagerly into her face as she turns it up to his, he sees that her smile does not touch her eyes, which are blank and strangely wary.  _ Like a doe listening for the hunters’ horn _ .

He sits down on the edge of the bed, and leads Anne to sit by him. When she does, he takes both her hands in his and, still looking into her face, raises them to his lips and kisses the knuckles of each. Anne’s smile deepens, but her eyes remain guarded. This will not do.

“Anne,” he sighs, readying the words he has prepared. He hopes they will be enough.

“Your Majesty,” Anne counters, her tone as neutral as her expression.

“You have been so gracious in every matter concerning our arrangement,” Henry says sincerely. “I wish you to know that I am sorry if ever I treated you rudely, and to assure you that if I did it was through no fault of yours, for you have never given me just cause to be angry. Will you forgive me?”

“Forgive you?” Anne’s pale brow furrows slightly, and her smile fades. She drops her gaze to their clasped hands. “How can I?” 

For a heartbeat, Henry is shaken. What does she mean? If she has not forgiven him, then why invite him to her bed? Perhaps she was too afraid to refuse him. The thought chills him. He does not want to be loved that way. 

His hands tremble, and he knows Anne feels it. She looks up again, and the bright smile she raises to him now fills her eyes with an earnest warmth and understanding that sweeps over him in a rush. “How can I, when there is nothing to forgive?” She must read the doubt still in Henry’s face, for she gives a wry little laugh. “It is true that the circumstances were… uncomfortable, for the both of us, I think. Yes?” 

Henry nods in bemused relief, and Anne resumes: “But you were, and are still, so kind and generous to me, that I have never had cause to complain of Your Majesty’s behavior.”

“Nor will you ever have,” Henry swears, meaning every word, and leans in to kiss her. She kisses back willingly, her lips opening to his as he releases her hands and reaches out to embrace her. His hands find her waist, and his fingers brush the curve of her belly through the thin fabric. There, where Katherine is still slender and sinewy with youth, Anne is full and soft and somehow infinitely more enticing. An image rises in his mind of Anne with child-- his child-- and the idea excites him so that he moans into her mouth, clutching at her. Anne draws back a little at this sudden urgency, and Henry reminds himself to move slowly. His apology will mean nothing if he is ungentle now.

Twining one hand through Anne’s hair, he lets the other trace the line of her hip and down along her thigh, drawing her chemise upwards pinch by pinch, feeling for the hem. When his fingers graze skin, Anne shivers and Henry takes the opportunity to break their kiss and lock eyes with her again. Anne’s cheeks are prettily flushed and her brown eyes sparkle. How could he have ever thought her ugly?

“Sweet Anne,” he whispers, stroking her cheek. She dimples under his admiration. Holding her gaze, Henry slides his hand up the inside of her thigh under the chemise, reveling in the fluttering of her lashes and the way her knees part eagerly at his touch. His fingers find their mark and he lets out a long, shuddering breath as they dip into the inviting wetness between her legs. Anne’s eyes close and her head tilts back in anticipation. Henry forces himself to pause, again, and allows himself leisure to kiss her white throat before exploring further.

It has been many years since Henry had to woo thusly, with artfulness and nimble fingers, but he remembers the way. Under his ministrations, Anne sighs and leans against him, clinging to him sweetly as he kisses her lips, her hair, her temples, working first one and then two fingers inside her. He is only the smallest bit surprised to find her no longer a maid, and the feeling dissolves quickly into a wistful jealousy. Who was the first man to have her? What might she have felt for that man, and for others after? Once these thoughts would have enraged him, excited him. But he has no right to ask such questions of her now. He lets the envy go and concentrates on the circles his thumb is tracing on Anne’s clitoris, keeping the pressure light and focused. 

Anne gasps and pushes back against his hand, seeking more. Her right hand drops from his shoulder to his lap, fumbling through the folds of his nightshirt, but now it is Henry’s turn to pull back. “No,” he tells her sternly, and then, smiling to dispel her confusion: “Not yet.” He slides his fingers out from between her legs and raises them to his mouth, watching Anne’s face as he sucks the taste of her from them. She blushes to her hairline, still maid enough to be shocked at his boldness, and Henry triumphs in it. 

“Let me look at you,” he says, twitching at her chemise. Anne obligingly moves to sit further back on the bed and pulls the thin garment up over her shoulders. Henry realizes as she does that he has never seen her naked. In the dying firelight and the shifting glow of the candles, her skin gleams like burnished gold. Shadows deepen the curves of her hips and buttocks. Her breasts are larger than he remembers them, the areolas dark and smooth. Again he is struck by the difference between her and Katherine; he cannot help the comparison. He loves Katherine for her unquenchable youth and firm lithe body, but she is still a child in many ways, and his to look after as though she were a daughter instead of a wife. Before him is a woman in the full flower of life, capable and loving and so much more his equal. His eyes rove over her rounded form, and he feels a queer blend of arousal and sadness at what he has so freely given up.

“Do I please your Majesty?” Anne asks. 

Henry looks up swiftly, ready to reassure her at once, and sees that her lips are curled in a sly and knowing smile. Disarmed and delighted, he laughs aloud and swings his legs up to lie beside her on the bed. “I think you know that you do,” he tells her, and she chuckles softly in acknowledgement. 

“But tonight,” Henry whispers, reaching out to brush a lock of Anne’s hair from her brow, “it is my wish to please  _ you _ .” 

Anne’s breath hitches at his words. For a fleeting instant Henry sees in her face the tremulous fearful hope he had seen on their very first meeting, when he had surprised her with his unannounced visit. He had dashed that hope beneath his feet once. He will not do so again.This time, when he leans in to kiss her, he wills into it all the tenderness and gratitude he feels: for her openhearted forgiveness of him, her loving compassion for his daughters, the gentility and nobility of spirit she has shown throughout their acquaintance. In it, too, is his own unvoiced desire for comfort and ease, for the familial intimacy of her supper table to extend here too.

Anne melts into his kiss with a soft “oh” of contentment. Henry cups her face with both hands and deepens the kiss, his tongue seeking hers as her lips part, then runs a hand lightly down her neck and collarbone to caress the swell of one breast. Her nipple puckers and tightens at his touch. She hums with pleasure and he breaks their kiss to press her gently back against the pillows. He runs both hands down her sides, admiring for a moment the spill of her straight dark hair against the white linens, the quivering of her smooth stomach. Then he bends his head down to plant a kiss on each nipple before drawing one into his mouth.

As Henry suckles at first one breast, then the other, Anne does not writhe and moan as others might, nor giggle giddily as Katherine does. Her chest heaves with silent sighs; she lets her hands play through his hair and strokes his back, sometimes scratching him lightly with her nails. Where other women would make a show of their pleasure to flatter him, her silence excites him and spurs him on. He wants to make her moan, and knows he must earn it.

His own arousal is growing hard to ignore. Under his nightshirt his cock stands flush against his belly, and he cannot keep from pressing it greedily against Anne’s hip as one hand trails down her body to toy with the tight curls at her mound. Her pelvis rises to meet his fingers and he obliges her gladly, calming himself by making lazy clockwise swipes at her clit while his tongue circles counterclockwise around her left nipple. Anne whimpers low in her throat, and Henry encourages her with a gentle bite and an increase of speed down below. 

“Your Majesty,” Anne gasps, and Henry lifts his head.

“Henry,” he says, and is surprised at how pleading he sounds. “Tonight I’m just Henry.”

Anne smiles at him then, a true smile that crinkles her eyes almost shut, and to his amazement he sees tears edging her lashes. “Henry,” she whispers. It is the first time he has heard her speak his Christian name, and the sound of it on her accented tongue sends a thrill through his loins. He surges upwards to kiss her full on the mouth, unable to restrain himself any longer. Through the pounding of his blood he fears she may still pull away, but she wraps her arms about him in a warm, if not equally passionate, embrace.

As they kiss and clutch at each other, Henry redoubles his efforts, slipping his middle finger inside Anne’s cunt and crooking it, searching for the little pad of nerves he knows he’ll find. With his forefinger and thumb he rubs and presses at her clit. She does moan, then, softly, head falling back on the pillows. One hand comes up to hide her face, but Henry grasps her wrist and gently but firmly holds it away. “I want to see you,” he rasps, and Anne moans again in shame and desire as his searching finger finds its target. Her thighs clench around his hand, and he watches as she shakes apart, tossing her head back and forth as she pants for air. 

He feels the rush of wetness as she comes, and releases her wrist to finally, finally reach down and take himself in hand. He is hard as steel and burning to the touch. “God,” he breathes, looking down at her trembling form. “Anne. I want you. Please, please let me--”

“Yes,” she murmurs, reaching up to him. “Yes, yes.”

Henry rolls on top of her, heedless now of the ache in his leg. She spreads her knees wide to accommodate him and at last he sinks into her, groaning at the heat and slickness of her. She is soft and pliable and still pleasantly tight. He grits his teeth and tries to move slowly, praying he can make himself last for both their sakes. He rolls his hips and Anne sighs with pleasure. Her arms encircle his lower back, nails digging into his skin.

“Oh, God,” Henry groans again. “Oh, fuck,  _ Anne _ .”

She laughs, low and delighted, and he wonders muzzily if she is laughing at him, at his own helpless desire for her now when once he had raged and ranted of disliking her so. He rocks his hips again, harder, and feels her tighten around his cock with a little gasp. He growls and wraps his arms around her, pulling her close and letting his forehead drop to touch hers, still rocking slowly inside of her. He wants to lose himself in her, in the strange familiarity of this body he has never known before. Closing his eyes, he pictures Anne at Christmas, more radiant even than his young queen; and seated primly, watching Elizabeth dance with the proud gaze of a mother; and peeking at him that very night over her winning hand of cards, coy and utterly alluring.  _ All this _ , he thinks,  _ might have been mine. _

He has her now, at least, in this moment. He kisses her softly, sweetly, and begins to thrust in earnest. She lifts her hips to match his pace. He wants to weep. This is everything, everything he has longed for those nights alone in his cold bed, too old and weary for Katherine’s energetic lovemaking, fearful of ill counsel and his deceitful court. Anne feels like home.

“Henry,” Anne sighs in her lilting tone, and it’s too much, too much, he’s coming, he is undone. 

When the stars fade from his vision, he is lying with his head between her breasts, cheeks wet with sweat and tears. Anne strokes his temple. For a while they stay like that, Henry letting his breathing slow, feeling his pulse return to its normal rhythm. Then he sits up. Anne follows suit, pushing herself up to recline against the cushions. She seems suddenly shy, uncertain of his mood in the aftermath of such passion. “Will you go to your chambers now?” she asks. “Shall I have my ladies fetch your page?”

“I would sleep here tonight,” Henry says quietly. “If you will allow it.” He cannot bear to leave her yet.

She looks at him for a long moment, her dark eyes unreadable. Then she nods, and folds back the coverlet for them both. She rolls onto her side, and Henry slides into bed beside her, cradles her close and buries his face in her hair. For the first night in many, he sleeps without waking.

  
  
-fin


End file.
